Saturday, January 26, 2013

Male observers

Great idea, that.  Out here in the desolate Bering Sea there are few women.  As it is on the boat now, there is one galley girl (who is new), and a pursor.  The pursor is an inexplicable Asiatic yet somehow Russian lady in the age range of 40 to 60.  I really can't nail it down any better than that.  The galley lady is a bit younger perhaps.  That's it though.  The rest of us are manly men for the most part. 

Which brings me to the topic of observers.  Many of the observers are young, post college, women.  And the first rule is 'no fraternizing with the observers'.  That means hands off.  And that means you.  And me.  We had an observer last season who I may or may not have spent some time talking to on a professional level.  There were no firable offenses committed.  It was all a very copacetic situation.  Really.  I'm telling you it's not like I went out and spent Christmas with her family or anything.  Just some boat chat.

But the boat chat was nice and I miss my observer friend.  She was easily the second smartest person on the boat and a tremendous conversationalist.  We had paper airplane flying contests in the galley and I even gave her a piano lesson with a bottle of sriracha as a pen.  And we may have made faces out of food on used dinner plates.  Just good fun all around.  And, I imagine she is the type of person who would have no problem engaging in a food fight in either a hotel room or a restaurant.  Just a gut feeling.  So ya.  She was fun and I miss her here.

But sometimes sequels suck.  And I'm honestly glad to not have any other lackeys around trying to be the fun and personable government agent that she was.  There is no other like that, so why bother?  Since I've been fishing, I've had occasion to meet and talk to a number of observers and they aren't that fun for the most part.  So let's keep it guy and just let these fellas count their fish.  Right?

I'd like to talk about them, but there is a strict anti-harassment policy.  I'm not saying that I have anything to say that is harassing in nature.  I'm not saying that at all.  But I could venture a guess that our tastes in automobiles differ.  Like, say, a Vokswagen Bus versus a Chevy.  And that's it.  Basically what I'm saying is that I won't be fraternizing with these observers either.  Just like I didn't fraternize with the one from last season.  And we probably won't be talking about camshafts and cylinder heads.  But who knows?

So male observers are welcome, according to this observer.  And all my psychological fissures can be mended with a lucrative season.  I'm not saying I'm money grubbing or anything like that.  I do, however, prefer it when money is no object.  Money becomes less of an object, ironically, when it exists.  So, the property of money existing, in a real sense and being something of a literal object makes it that wonderful metaphorical non-object.  Glad we're all clear on that.

I wish I could talk about some funny stuff here, but there really hasn't been much.  Either that or I'm jaded.  I still laugh at wit and basic observations, but there is no 'Nap Time' crew member to share.  Everyone is pretty normal.  I'm not gonna say boring yet.  But ya, kinda boring.  It's like people want to be serious fishermen or something.  Pfft.

I did blow the dust off of the piano today.  Besides the distraction of teaching impromptu lessons to the legion listeners and declining all requests, it was pretty good.  The galley girl needed a cold shower.  I told her ahead of time, "Listen, if you can't control yourself I'm not gonna play.  Sometimes the ladies have a tough time keeping it together...".  I was mostly kidding.  But once I started playing and she stopped working everyone looked at me like, "what's going on here?"  Nothing.  Trust me.  I can't help it if I think way too much and play sweet seduction on the keys.

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